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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411840">with dirty hands and worn out knees</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftirnanog/pseuds/oftirnanog'>oftirnanog</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>Supernatural</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Episode Tag, Getting Together, M/M, Post-Episode: s15e09 The Trap</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-01-26</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-04-28 14:28:20</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>General Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>2,700</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/22411840</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/oftirnanog/pseuds/oftirnanog</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>It was one thing to say it all in Purgatory without Cas directly in front of him, like confessions made under the dark protection of night, but quite another to sit here in the bunker, under the harsh kitchen lighting, so close he would have only to shift slightly for their legs to brush, and lay it out so openly.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Castiel/Dean Winchester</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>2</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>221</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>with dirty hands and worn out knees</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="fff_chapter_notes fff_head_notes"><b>Author's Note:</b><blockquote class="userstuff">
      <p>my first foray into supernatural fic. a belated coda to 15x09. a belated birthday gift for my boy dean winchester. figures he'd be the one to get me to write fic again.</p>
    </blockquote></div><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>"I believed him," Sam says. "I still do."</p>
<p>Dean could be angry. Hell, maybe he should be angry. Losing their one sure way to stop Chuck. And he supposes he is, somewhere deep under his ribs, but it's not boiling over like it normally does. Part of him thinks that maybe finally admitting, out loud, that his anger is something he can't control, has mitigated it, somehow. But another part knows it has more to do with the palpable relief he'd felt over knowing Cas wouldn't have to take the Mark, over having that decision taken out of their hands. The relief is so overwhelming he could choke on it.</p>
<p>So what he says is, "That's good enough for me."</p>
<p>Sam looks visibly surprised, like he was expecting Dean to go off on him for making a decision based on information the rest of them didn't have. And that creates a churn of guilt in his gut that threatens to unseat the last mouthful of whiskey he swallowed. He never wanted Sam to be scared of him the way that Dean had been scared of John. He worked so hard to protect him from that and it was looking like he'd failed. Failed like he had at so many things.</p>
<p>"We'll find another way," Dean says. It's a party line that's never really worked in their favour, but he figures the law of averages has to give them a win eventually. Why not now, at the end of the world, yet again?</p>
<p>Sam is wiped. Exhausted down to his very bones from watching the horrors of their possible future unfold and then saying good-bye to Eileen. He leaves the kitchen with a mumbled goodnight and then it's just the two of them again.</p>
<p>Dean and Cas and the weight of everything spoken and unspoken between them, because for everything Dean said in his prayer to Cas, there was even more that he didn't. There's a confession burning under his ribs that's been there for years but has been threatening to engulf him since he found Cas under that tree by the rift in Purgatory. Since he took a knee and prayed that Cas could hear him. He thinks he would have finally given voice to it, too, if Cas hadn't stopped him. If they hadn't been seconds away from being trapped in Purgatory, again. If he hadn't been worried about Sam.</p>
<p>They both let the silence stretch. It could be seconds. It could be minutes. It could be an hour. Dean can't be sure because even with everything left unsaid, it's a comfortable kind of silence, so unlike the silence that's been hanging between them since Chuck. Since Jack. Since Mary. So Dean lets it stretch and lets the comfort of it settle him.</p>
<p>"So we're back at square one," Dean eventually says, pouring out another finger of whiskey.</p>
<p>"So it would seem," Cas replies. He's looking at his hands, clasped together on the table. Dean would offer him his own glass of whiskey, but he knows Cas won't take it.</p>
<p>"I gotta say, I'm, uh, I'm not that sorry about it," Dean admits. He looks down at his own hands as he says it. Tilts the glass to watch the way the alcohol drags in viscous channels down the sides.</p>
<p>He looks up when Cas doesn't say anything. He's frowning at Dean, surprised, like Sam, over Dean's lack of anger, but also genuinely confused.</p>
<p>"I never wanted you to have to take the Mark," Dean explains.  It makes Cas' eyebrows turn down at the ends and gather in the centre of his brow. A different kind of disbelief softened by something unbearably tender. Dean wants...he wants. As he has so many times before, he wants to reach for Cas. To settle his hands on either side of Cas' face, fingers in his hair, thumb smoothing the creases at the corners of his eyes that Dean wonders about sometimes. Wonders if Cas is letting himself age at the same rate they are. It makes something ache in the centre of his chest, those lines. He wants to press him mouth to them.</p>
<p>Cas looks away first, back down at his hands still clasped together. "I can't say I was particularly confident in my ability to bear it," he says.</p>
<p>That admission startles Dean's attention away from Cas' wrinkles. He huffs.  "You woulda done better than me, I'm sure."</p>
<p>Cas gives him a soft smile, just like another one he gave him years ago when Dean had the Mark. It's so similar that the force of the memory is enough to hitch his breath in his lungs. Dean stealing Cas' burger, stuffing fries in his mouth, telling Cas to let Claire go. <em>I'm not exactly a role model</em>. Cas smiling just like he is now. <em>Yes, you are</em>.  </p>
<p>"I'm not," is what Cas says now. In that same tone.</p>
<p>Dean scoffs, just like he did then, but the memory takes most of the strength out of it, so it sounds more like a simple sharp exhale.</p>
<p>"You give yourself too little credit," Cas says. "I know you said you can't control your anger when things get bad, and I'm not saying that isn't true, or that it isn't a problem, but you bore the Mark remarkably well considering all the anger that you were already harbouring."</p>
<p>Dean swallows. It's the most direct reference either of them has made to Dean's prayer since they stepped through the rift out of Purgatory and back into the bunker. He still can't believe he said some of what he said. He feels flayed and raw just thinking about it. Heat rises into his face and he downs his whiskey in one gulp. It was one thing to say it all in Purgatory without Cas directly in front of him, like confessions made under the dark protection of night, but quite another to sit here in the bunker, under the harsh kitchen lighting, so close he would have only to shift slightly for their legs to brush, and lay it out so openly.</p>
<p>"I really don't know why I get so angry," he says eventually.</p>
<p>Cas' expression morphs into something impossibly sad and for a second Dean thinks Cas might cry. He feels somehow responsible for this sadness, but he doesn't know why or how that might be. He only knows that he wants to take it away. That want--that need--to reach for him starts gnawing again at Dean's insides.</p>
<p>"Dean," Cas says, interrupting an impulse to touch that Dean was about to give into. "You've had an incredibly difficult life filled with traumas most people could never even begin to imagine. I would be surprised if you weren't angry."</p>
<p>Dean blinks at him, unable to come up with a response to such a statement.<br/>
<br/>
"Dean, I--" Cas cuts off and swallows. His hands twitch like he's about to move them, but changes his mind. He fixes Dean with a stare instead. One that's fierce and sincere and a little bit desperate around the edges. "I forgive you, too."<br/>
<br/>
And Dean, well, Dean isn't sure if he wants to laugh or cry, but he is sure that he needed to hear that. Is only now, after hearing the words land, realizing just how much he needed it. They come with a swoop of relief. Relief stronger, almost, than knowing Cas won't have to bear the Mark. Stronger than finding him again in Purgatory. Than seeing him backlit in an alley next to a telephone booth. Than watching a terrible, rotting blackness recede and disappear. Or watching him gasp awake, human, after taking an angel blade to the chest. Or finding him scruffy and filthy in the mirror of a motel bathroom. So many moments where Dean could have collapsed from the sheer exhale of held breath over all the times he thought Cas dead and found him whole and alive again. And none of them compare to this, this offering of forgiveness he's still not sure he deserves. He's willing to take it this time, though, willing to crack himself open to the possibility of it. Doesn't feel the knee-jerk impulse, this time, to refuse it, to say, <em>Don't. You shouldn't. I still blame me. I don't forgive myself</em>. </p>
<p>Dean doesn't trust his voice, so he nods. Swallows the <em>I love you</em> that he's been swallowing since his desperate prayer in Purgatory. The <em>I love you</em> that's the same thing as <em>I forgive you </em>and <em>I'm sorry</em> and <em>I should've asked you stay.</em></p>
<p>He clears his throat and manages, instead, to say, "I'm gonna be better for you, Cas." That, too, another version of <em>I love you</em>. He's not sure what's stopping him from saying it now, except maybe that he already feels too raw and he's not sure he'll survive stripping away another layer right now.</p>
<p>"I intend to do the same for you," Cas says.</p>
<p>Dean nods again. It's enough, for tonight. They're both exhausted and overwhelmed. Dean needs to sleep for about fifty years.</p>
<p>"Well, I'm gonna hit the hay," he says, standing. His knees pop and his shoulder cracks when he rolls it. "Goodnight." He claps a hand on Cas' shoulder, right at the juncture of his neck and squeezes, resists the urge to linger, to rub his thumb over the knobs of his spine and push his fingers into the hair at the base of his skull where it's soft and slightly curled. He does let his hand drag across Cas' back though, not breaking contact until the last possible moment as he walks away.</p>
<p>"Goodnight, Dean," Cas replies.</p>
<p> </p>
<p>***</p>
<p> </p>
<p>The next morning, Dean finds Sam in the library, hunched over an ancient tome, the cup of coffee at his elbow gone cold. He looks terrible and Dean wonders if he slept at all. His hair is hanging lank around his face and the bags under his eyes have taken on a purple tinge. The air of defeat clinging to him is so thick that for a moment Dean thinks he could almost brush it away like cobwebs. It doesn't even look like he's reading the book he has open in front of him. Dean wants to tell him to give it a rest--they should at least get a day to regroup--but he knows Sam won't listen. Knows Sam would rather at least pretend to be working, even though he looks more like a reanimated corpse right now than a person.</p>
<p>"Find anything?" Dean asks, already knowing the answer. They've been through every book in the bunker at least twice apiece, some of them more, and always come up with bupkis. Their one solution was to lock Chuck away like Amara.</p>
<p>Sam shakes his head and drags a hand over his face. "Nothing." He sounds, if possible, even more exhausted than he looks.</p>
<p>Dean tries to come up with something to say that will rally him, something that doesn't sound hollow, but all he manages is, "Have you heard from Eileen?" and that has the opposite effect entirely.</p>
<p>"Yeah," Sam says, brisk and perfunctory as he tucks his hair behind his ears. "She's okay."</p>
<p>He doesn't offer more than that and Dean doesn't ask. He's not going to push if Sam doesn't want to talk about it.</p>
<p>"Good," Dean says, and takes a sip of his coffee while trying not to make it too obvious that he's scanning the bunker for Cas. He expected to see him by now, if not in the library with Sam, then in the kitchen. He takes another gulp of coffee, too big for how hot it still is, and it scalds all the way down. He tries not to choke on it, but ends up coughing wetly.</p>
<p>"You seen Cas?" he asks once he has his esophagus back under control. He has to work hard to keep his voice even, to keep it casual. Not that Sam would notice one way or the other in his current state.</p>
<p>"Uh, yeah. He said he was going to talk to Donatello. See if we could get anything else out of the demon tablet."</p>
<p>"He left?" Dean stands up, chair scraping loudly across the library floor. Panic flares hot and bright in the pit of his stomach. His heart trips into double time even as he tries to reason with himself that a trip to see Donatello is hardly cause for alarm.</p>
<p>"No, he--" Sam is cut off by Cas saying, "Dean, you're up."</p>
<p>Dean steadies himself by pressing his palms flat to the table and taking measured breaths to quiet the blood surging in his ears. It does nothing to calm the jittery adrenaline spike caused by thinking Cas had left. Again. He feels the way he does when they pull all-nighters guzzling sludgy gas station coffee and energy drinks, jagged around the edges and a little bit sick.</p>
<p>"I just spoke with Donatello," Cas says, oblivious to Dean's recent panic, holding his cell phone to indicate the recent conversation. He hadn't left at all. Dean shuts his eyes and takes another steadying breath as Cas continues, "He doesn't have any insight into whether the demon tablet could be of any further use."</p>
<p>Dean swallows and mentally berates himself for the overreaction.</p>
<p>"Dean, are you okay?" Cas asks, deciding to notice Dean going to pieces now that he's pulling himself together.</p>
<p>"Yeah, sorry," Dean says, squeezing his eyes shut again like that might help. When he opens them, Cas is standing right next to him. He lets out a laugh that rattles its way out of his chest, shaky and unsure. Sam mumbles something about getting himself more coffee. Dean makes himself look at Cas. "I don't know, I--I thought you left."</p>
<p>It sounds so horrifically needy that Dean wishes he could take the words back almost as soon as they leave his throat, except that then Cas' expression is softening into one of understanding.</p>
<p>"I would've come back," Cas says. "And I would have told you first. If I was leaving."</p>
<p>Dean laughs again and this time it comes out sounding slightly unhinged. He realizes he's fisted his hand in the front of Cas' trench coat though he has no memory of doing that. He uses this to tug Cas closer and lets himself sink forward so their foreheads knock gently together. Dean hears a sharp intake of breath from Cas and then feels hands settling at his hips. Warmth surges through him, up from his belly to his chest and tingling through his pelvis. They're so close Dean can see even the finest lines around Cas' eyes, can see all the different shades of blue flecked in his irises. Dean wants to kiss over his eyelids, down his nose, over the sweep of his cheekbones until he reaches his lips. Dean can feel heat creeping up his neck and into his cheeks at the thought.</p>
<p>"Cas, I don't want to make any assumptions here, but--"</p>
<p>"Yes," Cas says. "Yes."</p>
<p>And so it's Cas who tilts forward first, closing that small gap and pressing their mouths together, hot and desperate. Dean can't believe it's happening. But that's Cas' stubble rasping against his own. Cas' tongue licking past his lips, into his mouth. Cas' hands scrabbling at his waist, trying to draw him impossibly closer. Dean opens to him and kisses him and kisses him until he remembers that he needs to breathe.</p>
<p>"You have no idea how long I've wanted to do that," Dean says, pulling back just enough to get the words out.</p>
<p>Cas leans back just a bit further so he can look at Dean properly and says, "I think I have some idea."</p>
<p>The sincerity on Cas' face is more than Dean can handle, so he buries his nose against Cas' neck and breathes him in. They still have a lot to talk about. There's still a confession beating against Dean's ribs that he can't quite bring himself to say aloud. They still have Chuck to deal with and an apocalypse to avert. But they'll do it together. And this time, Dean thinks, this time they'll be better.</p>
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